Personal stories

Rachel Cook in MCV/Gay News Network interviews Tony Briffa in a great extended review of Tony’s life and work, published today. On finding out about Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and taking testosterone: At the age of 29, (after she had been in a straight marriage with a man for two years from 19 to 21 and… Read more →

I support marriage equality and acknowledge the great work done by Australian Marriage Equality (AME) over the years. I am disappointed however, that they are now pushing legislation in NSW and Tasmania that will exclude some intersex and trans people from marriage. This clearly is not “marriage equality” which is why I am calling on AME… Read more →

A version of this article, by journalist Andrew Bock, was one of two published by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers on 20 June this year. This is the full original text of the feature article, with title and text as written and kindly made available for publication here by Andrew Bock. Intersexuality and… Read more →

The Age newspaper printed two articles on intersex by journalist Andrew Bock on Thursday this week: It takes more than two and Call to end intersex genital operations. The news article contains a call by OII Australia and the AIS Support Group Australia to end appearance-related genital surgeries on intersex infants. This reflects our call… Read more →

The UK’s Equal Rights Trust has just published testimony by OII Australia president, Gina Wilson, in The Equal Rights Review, Vol. 10. Gina talks about her personal background, her work as an activist, and the issues we face in seeking human rights, including intersex and the sex binary, the medical model, invisibility in human rights… Read more →

Mika Venhola is a Deputy Chief of the Oulu University Hospital Department of Pediatrics and Adolescence. We included a partial transcript of this interview in one of our submissions to the Australian Senate Inquiry on involuntary or coerced sterilisation.

Hansard transcripts of the March 2013 public hearings for the Senate Inquiry on involuntary or coerced sterilisation have been published. Several issues are striking, not least the commonalities between the medical treatment of intersex people and the medical treatment of people with disabilities. We are grateful for the support of disability organisations like People with… Read more →

AutoStraddle has recently published a great piece by OII USA Associate Director, Claudia Astorino. In the US, intersex has generally been left out of LGBTI (here in Australia, it’s typically put in, even in situations where an organisation doesn’t know much about intersex). Claudia talks about this in her article: Intersex is now being included… Read more →

A note of caution: most people with intersex variations are simply men or women, with atypical sex characteristics. OII Australia acknowledges that people with intersex variations may be male, female, or identify with multiple or non-binary genders, just like other people. X passports are available not only to people with intersex variations, but also to… Read more →

“In the Case of C and D” isn’t the only Australian case of which we are aware of an annulment of marriage due to one party being intersex, but obtaining good, detailed documentation on such cases can be a major challenge. Broadcast journalist Ian Richardson has done an amazing job in documenting the story of… Read more →